Local co-op cut from Resident Evil Revelations 2, crowd goes wild

[Update: Capcom has released a statement saying that the inclusion of local co-op play in the Resident Evil Revelations 2 feature list was a simple mistake. "We apologize to our Resident Evil Revelations 2 PC players who purchased the game and expected to have local co-op as a feature. The feature wasn’t intended for this version and that caveat was mistakenly omitted from the product description on the Steam page earlier, and then included as soon as we were made aware. This was an unintentional error and again, we apologize for the confusion this may have caused," the statement says. "We are currently looking into the matter and potential solutions and we hope to have new information to share very soon, so please stay tuned. Thank you for your patience and understanding."

A Capcom rep said separately that refunds are now being offered through Steam.]

Original story:

The news that Resident Evil Revelations 2 does not support local co-operative gameplay has resulted in a flood of negative user reviews on Steam. The problem isn't so much the absence of local co-op, however, but that the game's Steam page listed it as a feature when it launched, and still includes a reference to it in the extended description.

Capcom told Eurogamer that the decision to cut local co-op play "was made to ensure a stable user experience across a variety of different PC settings and devices," but why the mode was listed in the first place remains unclear. And while the feature list no longer contains any reference to offline co-op, at the time of writing it was still listed as a feature in the "About This Game" section as "assistive co-op play."

"Players will need to switch between the two characters (Claire/Moira, Barry/Natalia) to overcome the nightmares in either single player mode with an AI partner or offline co-op," it states.

Capcom said the Raid mode will support online co-op play at some point in the future by way of a free patch, "but the main campaign on PC will only be available to play in single local screen."

The response has been predictably unhappy. Some of the dozens of negative user reviews include complaints about microtransactions and poor performance, but there is considerable anger over the fact that the feature was promised right up until yesterday, when it launched. We've reached out to Capcom for more information, but in the meantime, if you're looking for some offline co-op fun, you'll definitely want to look elsewhere.